I periodically watch the PBS series, Finding Your Roots, hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, who is a history professor at Harvard and director of the university’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Each episode has two celebrity guests, and the research staff tracks down their ancestry. But sometimes, even when I don’t watch I’ll record the show and fast-forward to my favorite part (and I suspect the favorite part of many viewers). That’s when they’ve taken a DNA sample from the guests and compare it to the DNA samples previous guests on the show have given. And see if there’s a distant match. (It’s been on for about 10 years, so they’ve had a lot of guests.) It’s a lot of fun when there’s a match – seeing the reaction -- and occasionally the matches are pretty amazing. One of the funding organizations of the show is Ancestry.com, which put together a highlight real of just some of the “match moments.” Semi-related side note: You may recall that back during the Obama Administration, a well-regarded black man was entering his home in his well-to-do neighborhood – when he was detained by a policeman. It got confrontational, and because it was so high-profile, President Obama brought to two men together to the White House for beers and to talk. The man wrongly-detained, trying to get into his own home, was Henry Louis Gates.
0 Comments
Ben Franklin was born on this day, January 17, in 1706. And as I like to do to celebrate, I thought I'd post a few songs with the good fellow from a couple of Broadway musicals. Yes, a couple -- there are two musicals I know of that feature Benjamin Franklin, which is probably two more than most people would have guessed for a very long time. While I'm certain that 1776 comes first to mind for most people, instead we're going to start with another. It's a show that opened in October, 1964, called Ben Franklin in Paris. And it had an impressive lead -- Robert Preston, in his first musical since The Music Man. It had music and lyrics by a fellow named Sidney Michaels and also starred Ulla Sallert. The show didn't have a long run, though did play for 215 performances, which is half a year. I'm not bowled over by the score, but it does have a few nice things in it. And happily, my favorite song even has video of it when the cast appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and performed the song and the scene that leads into it. This is "Half the Battle." The other song, "Look for Small Pleasures," is quite nice, in a small, charming way. In fact, it even had a bit of life outside the show and was recorded by several people, with moderate success. And of course we have to follow that up with something from 1776, with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards. So, here then is "The Egg." And...oh, okay, let's throw in an offbeat bonus. No, it's not a musical about Ben Franklin, but how can we end a celebration of the good fellow without this song from Mary Poppins?! It shouldn’t come as a shock that the Republican Party is having a difficult time this week with slavery. After all, when your party leader is a racist who enables White Supremacist groups and has said that there are “many fine people” among the neo-Nazia, and begins echoing Adolf Hitler, and the base of your party is filled with White Supremacists, neo-Nazis and your standard, garden variety racists, and several Republican-led states have blocked the teaching of “Critical Race Theory” in their high schools and grade schools (a college-level subject, not taught in any high school or grade school), and even blocked teaching Black history classes, and with the Republican Party morphing into fascism – of which one of the core tenets is xenophobia and hatred of all minorities -- then not knowing how to deal with slavery in order not to offend your base just isn’t something that comes amazingly out of the blue.
So, that brought us Nikki Haley being asked about what she believed caused the Civil War and telling her Town Hall meeting that it was really all about “Freedom.” Now, clearly Nikki Haley knows that the Civil War is not about “Freeeeeedom!”, but rather about slavery. She had the Confederate flag removed from the South Carolina capitol building, after all, when she was governor. But when talking to your party’s voters, you just can’t afford to offend the base. Even when it comes to saying that slavery is very bad. (My favorite moment was not her woeful explanation, but after her questioner expresses surprise that in 2023 she didn't even mention slavery, to which she asks, "What do you want me to say about slavery??" And he answers, "I'm not running for president.") And she made it worse the next day when, after having a lot of time to think about how to stop the ridicule, she pretty much doubled-down and said that, while it’s a given that the Civil War was about slavery, it’s about so much more today, like “Freeeeedom!” and government and individual rights, saying that that’s what she was supposedly referring to, about what it means today. Except… Well, except that that wasn’t what she was asked. She was asked very simply what was the cause of the Civil War. And the thing is, even if you’re going to address what it means today, it’s certainly not about “Freeeeeedom!” (unless you mean the freedom of slaves), and it is still about slavery at its foundation. And of course, slavery isn't about "individual rights," but the collective subjugation of a people. She also made it worse later still, insisting that the question had been asked by a “Democratic plant.” My immediate thought was that it’s pretty embarrassing if you can get tripped up by a Ficus. Though in fairness, a Democratic Ficus was known to be especially wily. That aside, even if this had been a sneaky Democrat who somehow got into the event and asked a “gotcha” question, if you want to be President of the United States, you had better be able a question – most especially if it’s as easy as “What caused the Civil War?” A question most six-graders can answer. By the way, “Gotcha” questions have become a big bugaboo the Republican officials ever since Sarah Palin was running for vice-president and asked what newspapers and magazines she read that informed her views. And she got stumped, answering “All of them” and then later complaining about how unfair the question was. (It should also be noted that as much as Nikki Haley wants to blame this on Democratic vegetation, this isn't even a case of "gotcha" at all, since it's not the first time Nikki Haley has addressed this. Video has since surface from 2010 when she's talking about the Civil War, and explaining that it was about a conflict between "tradition" and "change." No mention of slavery.) The Civil War is a complex issue. And there’s certainly more involved with it than just slavery. But slavery is the foundation of all the issues. Which is why it’s, as Nikki Haley herself said, “a given.” But still she’s gone on and on, defending her words to even more TV cameras. Here’s the problem with that – every day that goes by with Nikki Haley doubling down explaining why she was right saying the Civil War was about "FREEEEDOM," rather than slavery is a disaster for her. After all, if it's a "given" the cause of the Civil War was slavery (which it is, as she herself has "of course" noted)...then say that. And stop. The only remaining question for her about this is if it will affect the possibility of her being selected to be Trump's VP running mate. On the one hand, it’s become such an awful issue for her (that she keeps making worse) that it’s become an almost disqualifying distraction. On the other hand, not saying that that the Civil War was caused by slavery but is about “Freeeedom!” might be a positive in today’s Republican Party. And given the problems that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) caused for himself when he brought up slavery on Sunday – perhaps in defense of Nikki Haley, perhaps because (being a Republican) he thought this was a good thing. Cotton left a series of tweets trying to make the cool point that it was Democrats who actually supported slavery and caused the United States to split, when it was a Republican president who had to keep the country together. And Democrats who still want to tear the country apart. Apparently Cotton felt that when you write on social media, only your racist base can see it, not realizing that everyone can read what you’ve written, including those who understand actual history and reality. And he was scathingly excoriated. Actually, I thought there was at least one positive to come from Cotton’s effort – it showed that learning history of 160 years ago was A Good Thing. And especially learning Black History. After all, Cotton was correct about the Civil War. The Southern states that defended slavery and seceded 160 years ago were, indeed, Democrats. What Cotton left out was that the Democratic Party learned from his horrible mistakes and became aggressive defenders of civil rights for Black people, and that those conservative Democrats who refused to support this quit the party and became Republicans! And this happened as long ago as 1948 when the “Dixiecrats” were outraged by Democrats putting a civil rights plank in their party platform, and many walked out of the convention. And has become the base of the Republican Party since. In 1964, Mississippi Democrats walked out of the Democratic convention when a Black slate was going to be admitted. And in 1968, the switchover became pretty much completed when Richard Nixon had his “Southern Strategy,” going full racist, and the South became pretty much Republican. And has been so since. For the math-challenged, that’s 75 years since the Dixiecrats walked away. And this week doesn’t even include earlier when Ron DeSantis explained the Florida education standard that there were “benefits” to slaves, thanks to the skills they learned while under inhumane captivity. So, no, Republicans today don’t seem to have come to grips with how to deal with slavery as A Bad Thing so that they don’t offend their base. Oh, and as for Cotton’s other whimsical suggestion, it was Republicans who were the Insurrectionists that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and tried to overthrow the government. Perhaps Cotton missed the story, but it was in all the papers. And it’s been Republicans who have continued to defend the fascist Trump’s insistence to perpetuate this divisive lie that the election was rigged and stolen. In the end, if we’ve learned anything from all this, it’s just really, really hard to defend the indefensible. The only hope is that, among the “we” referenced here who have learned this incredibly easy and basic lesson of life, it includes Republicans. Don’t hold your breath on that. But miracles are possible. I wrote about this piece of remarkable TV history back in 2014, and it remains one of my favorites. Though there's some background music in it, it's not about music at all, but it will nonetheless fit in perfectly for Holiday Music Fest, mainly on the Fest part. Back in my initial posting on this site about Kukla, Fran and Ollie, I wrote about how the show's brilliant creator, puppeteer Burr Tillstrom won an additional Emmy Award that was not involved with KF&O, but for his work on his own. It was for one of the "hand ballets" that he performed on occasion for the satirical news series, That Was the Week That Was. That Was the Week That Was was a smart, pointed, very sharp British sketch-comedy show which was brought over to the U.S. in the early 1960s. Among other things, it introduced to American audiences one of the original British cast members, David Frost. It's also the show that introduced Tom Lehrer to most Americans. He wrote periodic songs for the series, and then recorded them for his now-classic hit album, That Was the Year That Was. And it also brought Burr Tillstrom into the national spotlight in a way people hadn't seen or expected. His hand ballets were little vignettes that didn't use any puppets at all, but merely Tillstrom's bare hands, using them alone to evoke some story in the news he wanted to get across. It was done with great artistry, often movingly. And one of them so artistic and moving that it won him an Emmy Award. In 1963, two years after the Berlin Wall had been erected, a very brief concession was made. The Wall would open for the Christmas holiday and allow those in the West to travel into East Berlin and visit family and loved ones, needing to return a few days later. This is what Burr Tillstrom did a hand ballet about shortly after. And -- -- I found the video of it! It is one of the favorite videos I've been able to find. I'm thrilled. The quality of the video is a little rough, especially at the beginning, but it's fine. And ultimately, as you watch -- one brilliant artist using only his hands -- the quality of the video won't matter one whit. And if anyone ever wonders where the humanity of Kukla, Fran and Ollie came from, to bring such life into puppets, now you'll know. When I posted this one year, I got a perturbed note from a reader who found nothing worthwhile about the video, and took me to task for wasting his time. In the spirit of the season, I will again refrain from anything ad hominen in return. I will just say that I feel completely comfortable in recognizing the legend of this piece, and anything else is an understandable matter of personal taste. Wherever that may lie. I say this knowing that it's not just my opinion on this, but also the opinion of the members of the Television Academy who voted Tillstrom the Emmy Award. But to be fair, I guess I should add a disclaimer. If anyone doesn't like old black-and-white video or just looking at hands for three minutes, or politics and history, or quiet, thoughtful, emotional storytelling with the sparsest of action or jokes, centered instead on pure artistry, I get it, and so by all means avoid this. For everyone else, here it is. The video calls it "Burr Tillstrom's 'Berlin Wall.'" For me, I think of it as "The Burr-lin Wall". Back in 2008, I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about new discoveries surrounding the holiday classic, Handel's "Messiah." Several months later, I followed it up with additional revelations. Given that 'tis its season yet again - it seems like a fine time to repeat the story, as just another of the many holiday traditions. Sort of like a very early, 18th century version of "The Grinch." But have a glass of nog, as well. Fa la la... Over the passage of years, we lose track of the conditions that existed when artworks were created. When those years become centuries, the history vanishes, and all that remains is the work itself.That is, until someone researches that history, and puts the piece in its original context.
And that brings up Handel's "Messiah." By any standard, it's a brilliant piece of music, which has understandably lasted 250 years. Even to those who don't share its religious underpinning, the music is enthralling, and part of the celebration of the Christmas season. Oops. Now comes this detailed, deeply-researched article in the New York Times by Michael Marissen. "So 'Messiah' lovers may be surprised to learn that the work was meant not for Christmas but for Lent, and that the 'Hallelujah' chorus was designed not to honor the birth or resurrection of Jesus but to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in A.D. 70. For most Christians in Handel's day, this horrible event was construed as divine retribution on Judaism for its failure to accept Jesus as God's promised Messiah." Oops. Mr. Marissen does an impressive, scholarly and even-handed job uncovering the history of Handel's "Messiah." If anyone is interested in that history, do read the article. At the very least, read it before stating an opinion on it... To be clear, this is not about political correctness. This is about correctness. The truth, we are told, shall set us free. Either we go out of our way to learn the truth in our lives - and embrace it - or we bury our heads in the sand and listen to the sounds of gravel. People will still listen to Handel's "Messiah" for centuries to come, whatever the reality behind it. The music is glorious. The words? Well, be honest, it's a fair bet that most people don't know exactly what's being sung about anyway - it's 2-1/2 hours, for goodness sake. Most fans wouldn't listen to "American Idol" for that long. People tend to tune out Handel's "Messiah" about six minutes in and let the music wash over them. When the "Hallelujah Chorus" is about to begin, they get nudged and sit up straight. And even at that, the only words most people know are "Hallelujah" and that it will "reign forever and ever." (Some people probably think it's about Noah's Ark.) So, in some ways, the libretto of Handel's "Messiah" is not of critical importance 250 years after the fact. And that might be the biggest joke on Charles Jennens, who wrote the text and apparently saw the work as a way to confront what he believed was "a serious menace" in the world By having his friend Handel set his pointed tracts to music, Jennens felt that would help get his point across more subtly to the public. The result, of course, was that the spectacular music swamped over the words, and over time they took on a completely different meaning. This is known as the Law of Unintended Consequences. Or also, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. Somewhere up in heaven, or more likely down in hell, Charles Jenniens has been pounding his head against a wall for the last couple hundred Christmases, screaming, "No, no, no! Don't you people get it?!! It's supposed to be about celebrating the destruction of heathen nations, not the embracing love of mankind. You people are so lame!" And it gets worse, because starting the day after Christmas - until the next Christmas when Handel's "Messiah" starts playing again - Jennens berates himself all year, wondering if he screwed up his work and didn't make it clear. Like maybe he used too many metaphors, or commas. Or perhaps in Scene 6, when he wrote, "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron," he should have explained who "them" was or described a different bludgeon. No doubt there will be some people aghast by the revelations (no matter how valid) about the writing of Handel's "Messiah." I also have no doubt that almost all those who are aghast have never sat through the 2-1/2 hour work. Nor that most of those ever paid attention to what the precise words actually were. But they will be aghast anyway. On the other hand, most people who have sat and sat through a 2-1/2 hour performance of Handel's "Messiah" likely welcome having an excuse now not to have to do so again. Mr. Marissen concludes his study with a thought on the subject. "While still a timely, living masterpiece that may continue to bring spiritual and aesthetic sustenance to many music lovers, Christian or otherwise, 'Messiah' also appears to be very much a work of its own era. Listeners might do well to ponder exactly what it means when, in keeping with tradition, they stand during the 'Hallelujah' chorus." And while singing along, they might want to add a "Hallelujah" for the truth, as well. And that, I thought, was the end of the story. But it wasn't. A few months later, while reading Volume 9 of Will and Ariel Durant's majestic Story of Civilization, entitled "The Age of Voltaire," I came upon their extensive discussion of Handel. After the passage on "The Messiah," the Durants continue on with the composer's life and eventually reach five years later, April of 1747, when Handel had hit hard times. Not only had he written a string of failures and needed to close his theater, but he went into a sort of retirement, and rumor passed that he may even gone insane, though perhaps it might have been mental exhaustion. (The Earl of Shaftesbury remarked, "Poor Handel looks a little better. I hope he will recover completely, though his mind has been entirely deranged.") However there was yet more to Handel - and to the story relating somewhat to the controversy today about "The Messiah." The Durants write -- "...Handel, now sixty years old, responded with all his powers to an invitation from the Prince of Wales to commemorate the victory of the Prince's younger brother, the Duke of Cumberland, over the Stuart forces at Culloden. Handel took as a symbolic subject Judas Maccabaeus' triumph (166-161 B.C.) over the Hellenizing schemes of Antiochus IV. The new oratorio was so well received (April 1, 1747) that it bore five repetitions in its first season. The Jews of London, grateful to see one of their national heroes so nobly celebrated, helped to swell the attendance, enabling Handel to present the oratorio forty times before his death. Grateful for this new support, he took most of his oratorio subjects henceforth from Jewish legend or history: Alexander Balus, Joshua, Susanna, Solomon and Jephtha. By contrast, Theodora, a Christian theme, drew so small an audience that Handel ruefully remarked, "There was room enough to dance." No doubt, Charles Jennens, author of the text for "The Messiah," is spinning even faster and deeper in his grave. But quality does win out over time. And so does transcending decency. And that, perhaps, in part, and in the end, may well be what we're left with. Hallelujah, indeed. On the surface, this is just a piece about entertainment. And basically it is. But I also think it deals with a major news story -- actually, the major news story today, the attack on Israel -- and how people grab onto a false narrative because it's what you want to be true. Even though, at heart, this is just about a song. A couple days ago, I got a text message from reader (and Camp Nebagamon camper when I was a counselor) Bill Guthman who'd come across an article online about the writing of the song, "Over the Rainbow," and how -- supposedly -- the underlying meaning of the song is that it was written about Israel as the homeland for Jews. This didn't seem right to Bill, so he wrote me to find out what I might know about it. This is part of the article in question. Did you know that “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was written, not about the mythical Land of Oz, but the homeland of the Jews - Israel? Honestly, and I say this not knowing much about the history behind the writing of the song, though knowing about writing and writing song lyrics, I don't even remotely believe the song is "about" Israel. I do understand why many would want to believe it so, most especially now -- and a great many of the readers comments clearly did believe it. But wanting to believe something is true doesn't change it from being a false narrative, no matter how noble the wish. It reminds me -- from a less noble perspective -- when there was an effort to show that the song "Puff the Magic Dragon" was about cocaine and drug use. At least in that case, nuts as it was, the original article about (in a Newsweek cover story, of all things) that used what purported to be supposed "evidence," dissecting the lyrics. Here, though the guy just basically says "Their family were Jewish immigrants, so this must be about Israel." That said, I'm sure -- like all writers/ songwriters E.Y. "Yip" Harburg (who was very openly radical left) looked for inspiration to help add impact to his words and might possibly have used a homeland for Jews to add a source of inspiration to perhaps part of his thinking. Perhaps. Maybe. But -- The songs for The Wizard of Oz were written in 1938. Though there had long been efforts to create a Jewish homeland, it seems inappropriate to overlay today's political awareness of "the Holocaust to come" (which wouldn't begin to reach the public for three years) on the meaning of the song. Further, and importantly, they were writing a song to fit the very specific plot point of a story about a girl unhappy with her bland, black-and-white life who is about to go to a magical, Technicolor world in the sky! So...of course that's what the song is (and must be) about. Whether the idea of an Israel homeland helped add a touch of texture to that, who knows? Perhaps. But again, the suggestion in the article is not about a touch of texture, but that "Over the Rainbow" is actually and specifically "about" the birth of Israel. Also, many, if not most Broadway songwriters of the time were Jewish and likely had similar backgrounds. (For starters, Irving Berlin, whose real name was Israel Beilin, and whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Belarus in 1983.) So, the fact that Harburg and Arlen’s families were immigrant Jews (!!) is borderline meaningless. Moreover, I've posted a video on my website of Harburg talking about the song and him singing it – which is maybe the most moving version of the song I've seen -- and he talks of the song being about wanting to make "a better world, a rainbow world" which fits far more into his personal politics of having been a blacklisted, lifelong socialist. So many of his lyrics were about social conditions. Like “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime.” Consider, too, many of his lyrics in the musical Finian's Rainbow (which for all its fantasy about leprechauns is highly political) like “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich,” “On That Great Come and Get It Day,” and, of course, another rainbow song, “Look to the Rainbow.” Rainbows -- a mixture of colors blended together -- are clearly important to Harburg. For his Broadway musical Flahooley, the story is fully, blatantly political, notably relating to Harburg's own blacklisted, socialist life, even though on the thin surface is merely about toys. (It deals with a genie misunderstanding a wish and giving away a company's top-selling toy, which infuriates capitalist forces who then start a witch hunt and attempt to destroy all the free toys.) That’s the political, social “better world” Harburg wrote about so often, and directly in "Over the Rainbow." (In fairness, he wrote a lot of whimsy, too, like "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" for the Marx Bros.) But here's that video where he talks about it, says what it means. He's not whimsically wondering about things, but Really Wants to Know, with all his heart, if birds can fly, why then can't he??! It's so meaningful and moving to Harburg that, even though he must have sung this hundreds if not thousands of times, he's in tears at the end. And further still, and importantly, after reading David McCullough's 2015 biography on the Wright Brothers, I made a discovery that at least one very famous passage from “Over the Rainbow” (those words about how if bluebirds can fly over the rainbow, why can’t I?) is surprisingly very likely related, at least in a tangential way to that -- a famous poem from Harburg's childhood and man now being able to fly! Rather than relay the whole story here, this a link to the piece I wrote about it. So, while it’s certainly possible that thoughts of a Jewish homeland helped color Yip Harburg’s great-many ideas worked into the song, to state without evidence an unsubstantiated presumption that the song is “about” Israel seems to be very unlikely. Though the goal in this case about "Over the Rainbow" (declaring that it's "about" a Jewish homeland) was well-meaning these days, it was still -- I'm near 100% certain -- wrong. If people want to take a song and interpret it to have deep meaning for themselves as a sort of anthem, that's another matter entirely and completely valid. But to create a false narrative is never good to take as fact and pass along as fact. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
Categories
All
|
© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2024
|